grandalliancefandomcom-20200216-history
Interstellar Drive
Interstellar drives provide the main way to travel vast interstellar distances in a short amount of time. The only other methods currently available are interstellar teleportation (although this is very expensive) and wormhole travel (which can only transport a vessel between two black holes). The Theory The Mass Field The mass field is spread throughout the entire universe. As objects move through the field, they meet resistance. Particles with a greater mass interactivity meet more resistance and have a higher mass. Faster particles also meet more resistance and have a higher mass. At the speed of light, the field is practically solid and provides an infinite resistance (and causes an infinite mass). Zero Mass Corridors Since an object cannot push against the mass field at the speed of light, the interstellar drive parts the mass field sideways (like opening a pair of curtains). This creates a zero mass corridor - a straight path through space in which there is an absence of the mass field. Gravitational Anchors The interstellar drive must stay active to prevent the zero mass corridor from collapsing; however, this does not prevent the mass field from entering at either end of the corridor. The interstellar drive prevents the field from pouring into the corridor through the spacecraft, but the corridor could still collapse at the other end. The only way to prevent this is to direct the corridor at a gravitational anchor: an extremely massive object with sufficient gravity to pull the mass field away from the corridor. A star will act as a sufficient gravitational anchor, as will a black hole (some artificial gravitational anchors have also been created). Sadly, this does mean that interstellar drives can only transport vessels to nearby stars or other anchors... they cannot be used to travel to deep space. Interstellar Drive Range Generating a wider zero mass corridor to allow the passage of a larger vessel simply requires a larger interstellar drive, which is a relatively simple task. However, generating longer zero mass corridors to reach more distant gravitational anchors is more difficult. Simple grade one drives can generate corridors only a few parsecs long. To reach anchors a few dozen parsecs away requires a grade five interstellar drive. Some experimental drives have a range of almost a hundred parsecs. History The invention of the interstellar drive proved to be much more difficult than that of the interplanetary drive. Most of the older civilizations in the galaxy managed to invent it, although most modern civilizations are lucky enough to discover the technology in one of the many ship wreckages that litter the galaxy. Just who created the first interstellar drive is a mystery, but it is known to have been invented independently by the Massari, the Xabuloids... probably even the Grox. Most of the original designs used different techniques to separate the mass field, although the Xabuloid design is now the most widely used, having been sold to every race in galactic arm gamma and now much of the rest of the Galaxy. However, the Xabuloids themselves (and the rest of the Grand Alliance) use a more expensive yet more efficient design perfected by the Paragans. Trivia *It took the Xabuloids a few years of dedicated research to build an efficient interplanetary drive. It took hundreds of years and hundreds of billions of sporebucks to invent the interstellar drive. *If the interstellar drive fails and the zero mass corridor collapses whilst a ship is travelling through it, the particles of the ship will collide with the mass field at the speed of light and decay instantly. The ship will completely disappear in a blast of radiation. *There have been thousands of incidents in which ships have failed to decelerate before reaching the end of the zero mass corridor, hence plunging headfirst into stars and other gravitational anchors. This is apparently hilarious to watch. *Never before have two ships travelling in separate zero mass corridors collided. Exactly what would happen in this situation is unknown. *When the mass field is parted by the drive, any particles in the field are moved with it. Zero mass corridors are complete vacuums with zero energy. *Zero mass corridors taper to a point at gravitational anchors. *Interstellar drives aren't perfect; they don't part all of the mass field. Objects in zero mass corridors don't have exactly zero mass. *A race known as the Gastropods claim to have travelled originally from a different galaxy using either a zero mass corridor thousands of parsecs long or another method of transportation entirely. Their claims are mostly ignored; their homeworld was probably simply hit by a planet buster. Category:Technology